Watchdog Group Tells Gableman to Pull His Sleazy, False Ad

It’s “unbecoming a sitting judge”

What's worse than being bombarded with campaign
ads from secretive, independent front groups in the final weeks before
an election? Being bombarded with a “disgraceful and deliberately
misleading ad” actually sponsored by a candidate for the state Supreme
Court himself.

The TV spot, produced and approved by Burnett
County Judge Michael Gableman, criticizes state Supreme Court Justice
Louis Butler for serving as public defender for Reuben Lee Mitchell,
who had been convicted of a sex crime. Butler had gotten Mitchell’s
conviction overturned, but his conviction was reinstated by the state
Supreme Court.

Mitchell served out his sentence in full.
Gableman’s ad claims that Butler, as a public defender, “worked to put
criminals on the street.” In a statement, Darrin Schmitz, a consultant
to the Gableman campaign, defended the ad as “factual” and said it
merely points out the “stark contrasts” in the candidates’ experiences.

But according to the Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity
Committee (WJCIC), a nonpartisan watchdog group composed of prominent
Republicans and Democrats monitoring this year’s Supreme Court race,
Gableman’s attack ad is so sleazy and false that it should be pulled
from the airwaves.

“The WJCIC believes that the tone and
content of Judge Gableman’s advertisement are unbecoming a sitting
judge and a candidate for our state’s highest court,” the group said in
a statement. “We also believe this disgraceful and deliberately
misleading ad is a gross violation of the pledge Judge Gableman made
Wisconsin voters on Feb. 21, 2008, to ‘refrain from personal attacks on
my opponent.’”

The WJCIC criticized Gableman—who is running as
a law-and-order candidate for the state’s highest court despite his
weak record on criminal prosecutions—for injecting race-baiting into
the campaign. Both Justice Butler and Mitchell are African American.

The
WJCIC said the ad was in “an offensive, race-baiting style reminiscent
of the infamous ‘Willie Horton’ advertisement” that stirred up racist
fears in the 1988 presidential campaign. The group went even further by
saying that Gableman is either not intelligent enough to understand the
role of a defense attorney or is deliberately lying about Butler’s role
in the case: “We believe Judge Gableman is deliberately misrepresenting
the facts regarding this case and Justice Butler’s role in it, and it
appears Judge Gableman is doing so either knowingly or with reckless
disregard for the truth or falsity of his campaign statements.”

Even
right-wing radio host Charlie Sykes had to “throw a flag on our own
team” and called the ad “misleading.” The WJCIC has also criticized two
ads produced by the pro-Gableman group Coalition for America’s Families
because they contained lies about Butler’s record.

Last week, the Shepherd reported
that pro-Gableman ads touting the judge’s record of fighting arsonists
were wildly overblown. Gableman prosecuted only one arsonist and lost
that case.